


I Still Want To

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Healing, Mental Health Issues, Recovery, Romance, Sokkla Saturday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:09:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26930419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: Healing, love, friendship. As if that would happen...
Relationships: Azula/Sokka (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	I Still Want To

**Author's Note:**

> For the second Sokkla Saturday.

“As if that would happen.” She says it to herself all the time. She says it to the doctors and therapists. To Zuko and her mother. 

With Ursa it’s, “we can fix things, we can all be a family again.”

Zuko always says, “it doesn’t have to be this way, we can try again and you can be friends with Mai and TyLee again.”

And her therapists inist, “you can recover and get back to a stable, productive life.” Or, “you’re still very young, you can still accomplish amazing things.”

Her response is always the same, “as if that would happen.” She is an abhorrent person and she knows it, this makes the first two feats impossible. And she is incapcitated so she won’t be achieving anything worthwhile.

Eventually and unspokenly, they write her off as a lost cause and send her home. They can’t deal with her anymore and she is Zuko’s problem again, not theirs. Azula supposes that they can only handle so much screaming and so many insults. 

She is an angry person.

She is a miserable person. 

And being at home makes her doubly so. She spends most of her days either pacing in her room or self-confined to her bed. Eventually days of passing become fewer and most of her days are spent in bed either laying or sitting and staring off. Her mind does circles around itself trying to figure out what had gone wrong and when exactly it had. From there she tries to count all of the ways in which she could have prevented it. She hadn’t anticipated it going all the way back to childhood; if only she hadn’t set that damn apple on fire. If only she hadn’t convinced Ozai to get Zuko a ship. If only…

She grips her head in her hands. 

If only she wasn’t a remarkable failure. 

She can hear them telling her that it’s going to be okay. That her life will amount to something and that she will be loved. She screams it again to nothing and no one, “as if that would happen.” 

She doesn’t realize that she is crying until she feels Sokka’s arms around her. This time she doesn’t have the energy to shake them off. 

She doesn’t know why he, of all people, has come to visit her.

She thinks that maybe he isn’t here at all. 

She looks up and finds that she is right. She is alone. 

Of course Sokka hasn’t come to check on her, “as if that would happen.” She mumbles again this time adding a bitter and shaky laugh. She Gives another one at the notion that she is so desperate for help that she’d imagine him of all people.

She wonders if she should go downstairs. 

Part of her wants to, but all of her is afraid. She hasn’t seen another soul in weeks, they drop her meals off by the door and run. She doesn’t know if she wants to see people or to be seen by people. 

Regardless, Azula picks herself off of the bed and heads for the door. Her footsteps are quiet, her posture almost timid. This is probably the only thing that keeps the palace staff that she passes by from passing out. They look at her as though she is a specter. With disbelief; Azula out and about…? As if that would happen. 

For some reason she expected the dining room to be full when she got there. But it is two hours past noon, of course it is vacant. Vacant except for one person. “What do you mean, there are no snacks today!” He sulks. 

“We forgot to make them.” Replies the serving boy, leaving Sokka to hunch over and pout. 

After the boy leaves he straightens and throws his hands into the air. “No snacks!” He complains to himself before catching her eye. He goes rigid and she isn’t sure what to do either. So she just lingers, lingers like the phantom they see her as. 

“You’re...not in your room?”

It’s a stupid observation, she won’t grace it with a reply. 

“How are you doing?”

That’s a personal question. She won’t grace it with a reply. 

“What made you decide to come downstairs?”

It has a lot to do with her vision of him. She won’t let him know that.

“Do you want to sit down?” He is terribly persistent and terrifically annoying. “Or we can sit in the living room, the chairs are more comfy.”

She still doesn’t speak but, with some reluctance she follows him into the living room. Rather she follows him into a large supply closet and then the servants’ sleeping quarters before taking the lead and showing him to the living room. He offers her a soft smile. “I guess it’s good that you’re out and about again. Zuko was getting worried.”

“Why?”

He furrows his brows.

“Why would Zuzu care what happens to me?”

“Because you’re his little sister. It’s kind of a big brother thing, ya know?”

She does not. 

“He’s probably going to be happy to know that you finally left your room.”

She shakes her head, “as if he would be.”

Sokka’s expression dims. “He cares about you. I don’t know why, you’re kind of a mean person…”

“Correct.”

“Like the worst person I’ve ever met...”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“But he still cares about you.”

“And you were doing so good…” she mumbles. “Two out of three isn’t bad I guess…”

She can’t tell if he wants to laugh or if he looks horrified. “You’re not doing too good, are you?”

She wants to ask what had tipped him off first. She says nothing at all. She doesn’t expect him to squeeze her hand and ask if she wants to visit Zuko. But she declines. She actually would rather head back to the isolation of her room. She doesn’t expect him to hug her like the hallucination had. Really she ought to jerk away. Instead she lets him hold her; it is kind of nice to have real contact again.

He breaks the hug and pats her back. “I guess we can just sit here then. I don’t really have anything else to do today.” 

That was the first day. 

There was a second and a third.

And then she lost track of how many times she’d come downstairs to talk to him. She tells both he and herself that she only comes around because his stupidity is free entertainment and that it makes her feel better about herself. 

He tells her that he thinks that she enjoys his company. 

She tells him, “enjoy  _ your  _ company? As if  _ that  _ would happen.”

Eventually he starts to laugh when she says that. He says that she says it way too much. There was a day when she was feeling rather well. A day when he remarked, “maybe one day you’ll find a new catch phrase.” That day she responded with, “as if that will happen.” That was the first time she has made someone laugh. 

She supposes that his laugh is quite soothing. 

In general Sokka is rather pleasant to be around, even if he lacks common sense half of the time. Even if he is quite a dolt. He kind of reminds her of a dog; dopey but loyal and loving. She tenses, noticing that she has just called him loving. She brushes it off, facts are facts; Sokka is kind and he is caring. He often makes gestures and expressions of care. That makes him the loving sort. 

She is not in love. 

Not with him especially. 

As if that would happen. 

But it does.

She isn’t sure when. But it does. 

He often helps her navigate social situations. Filling in for her when she begins to fumble and make herself look as dull as he. He helps her ease back into a friendship with TyLee and create new friendships with Aang, Toph, and Katara. He assures her that Mai will come around eventually. She coherces him to come with her when she speaks with her mother and Iroh. And she ropes him into dumb things that she does to mildly inconvinance Zuzu when she is feeling bored and petty. 

Sokka is there when she takes it too far one day and everyone gets angry with her all over again. She thinks that he is the only reason she was able to salvage things. He always seems to put in a good word for her, even if she doesn’t deserve it. 

More time passes and things start to grow comfy. Stable. She is starting to feel like herself again; well-groomed and even tempered. He notes that she is much more somber, quieter. He speculates that she’ll be more vibrant in time. She is certain that this is simply who she has become and who she will stay. 

As much as she wants him to be right. He isn’t. She is. She finds that she is simply a quiet person now. Reserved and of a cold demeanor. But there is a difference; this time the people around her seem to accept it. They certainly don’t take it personally. And so she is able to smile every now and again. 

Every now and again becomes almost regularly. 

She is still a quiet person. Still difficult to talk to and more or less introverted. But she isn’t melancholy and spiteful. 

A long time passes before he asks her if she’d ever consider marriage. Perhaps if she weren’t so socially inept she would have grasped just what he was asking. Instead she replies, “as if that would happen.”

He is more direct in his follow up, “what if the person proposing went by the name, Sokka.”

He has caught her off guard and she finds herself abruptly sputtering out a second, “as if that would happen.” 

She sees hurt on his face. But he still smiles at her over dinner and he still keeps her company while she works, rifling through contracts and trade agreements, looking them over before Zuko officially signs anything. 

It is only after she pushes the final one aside that she looks at Sokka and says, “okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I guess that we can do it, if you still want to.” 

“Do what?”

“The…” she trails off. “The marriage. We can do that.” 

He bursts out laughing and rubs his hands over his face. “Wow, that was overwhelmingly awkward!”

She turns her back to him, concealing a flushed face. She feels his hand on her back, a caring caress and then her wraps his arms around her middle and kisses the back of her head. 

“I still want to.” 

A small smile tugs at her lips. 

It dawns upon her that it is over. That the worst part of her life is truly over and that it has been for a while. It dawns upon her that she was wrong, that she is okay. That she will be okay now. 

For a moment, even with him holding her close, she dreads that she will relapse so terribly that she will lose him and everything she has repaired. For a moment she…

She stops herself. 

Letting things get that bad again; as if that would happen.


End file.
